Continuing miniaturization of cantilever probes imposes new challenges for their positioning and fixing within a probe apparatus. Cantilever probes are commonly fixed with their peripheral ends having their cantilever portion with the contacting tip free suspended to provide the required flexibility. To provide sufficient positioning accuracy, the fixture portion of the cantilever probe is commonly extensively dimensioned, which in turn consumes extensive real estate forcing multilayer cantilever probe assemblies with varying cantilever geometries. Such varying cantilever geometries result in different deflection behavior and limited average positioning accuracy of all cantilever probes of a probe apparatus. In addition, cantilever probes of the prior art are commonly fixed in a surrounding fashion along a linear fixture element, which requires additional surrounding referencing and/or positioning structures, which in turn consume additional space between the cantilever probes.
Prior art cantilever probes are commonly fabricated with lengthy peripheral structures for a sufficient fanning out between the ever decreasing test contact pitches and circuit board contacts of the probe apparatus. Peripheral fan-out structures may be a multitude of the cantilever portion, which reduces the positioning accuracy of the ever decreasing cantilevers and contacting tips.
For the reasons stated above, there exists a need for a cantilever probe and probe assembly that provides maximum contacting tip accuracy together with homogeneous deflection behavior within a minimum footprint. In addition, cantilever probes may be simple and highly consistent in geometry for inexpensive mass production. Other affiliated structures of the probe apparatus may be inexpensively fabricated to accommodate for highly individualized probe apparatus configurations. The present invention addresses these needs.